Pokemon: Sword & Scandal

2019 has been a real exciting year for video games. We’ve had so many new titles being introduced, as well as remakes of old classics. The long awaited Kingdom Hearts 3 finally dropped as well as Mortal Kombat 11, and Super Mario Maker 2 amongst others. The remake of Resident Evil 2 was released and we even got a release dates for Final Fantasy 7 Remake as well as Pokemon Sword and Shield! Alas, what should be a joyous time for all of the Pokemon fans has instead been met with anger, frustration, and confusion.

During E3, Nintendo gave us an awesome trailer for Pokemon Sword and Shield. It really had the community stoked and eagerly awaiting its November due date. In addition to this, it was also announced that the new Pokemon Home device/service would function as the new Pokebank to transfer all your old mons to the new game. What more could us fans ask for, right?! Everything was all peaches and cream until the Nintendo Direct aired moments after the trailer, revealing that the Galar Pokedex would not include all 809 pokemon species from the previous generations of the game. To add insult to injury, there will be no National Pokedex. The National Dex, as it’s commonly referred to, is an index of every last Pokemon in existence. This allows for mons not native to a particular region to be acquired. Furthermore, without the National Dex, this would render any Pokemon that are stored in Pokemon Home trapped within purgatory if they are not indigenous to the Galar region.

The internet erupted into a frenzy after hearing this announcement. The developers were bombarded with emails, tweets, and handwritten letters letting their discontempt with the latest situation be known. Enraged fans also started the hashtags: #bringbackthenationaldex and #bringbackallpokemon, and even had petitions on Change.org started. All of this was for naught though, as Nintendo doubled-down on their decision. They did offer us the explanation that it is a strenuous process to add character models and rendering for all 800+ pocket monsters and that an exhausting task such as this would require a lot of manpower and resources. They wanted to put forth that extra energy into producing a game that looks and plays excellent. In addition to this, it was further stated that this would be the game model going forward: each generation will only contain Pokemon that the game developers think would fit naturally into the region, or ones that are popular, and that Pokemon from other regions may not be traded if they are not in the new region’s Pokedex.

This is pretty much the Infinity War of Pokemon and Junichi Masuda is Thanos, ready to snap the fingers of his Infinity Gauntlet and dust the mons that won’t be appearing in Sword and Shield. A company that once prided itself on the slogan, “Gotta catch ‘em all!”, is now telling us that we can only catch all that are available. Hypocrite much? Now, I understand how you feel. Trust me. I do. Your beloved rare, shiny, EV, and IV trained Pokemon mean a lot to you, and you just want to bring them along with you on your latest Pokemon journey. Heck, you worked hard searching for that perfect nature and perfect IV’s on your Pokemon. Sure, your PC box is full of nothing but unwanted baby mons as you’ve hatched egg after egg, hoping that the Skitty and Wailord you left with that old couple at the daycare finally produce a Pokemon with the desired egg move or two. The bottom line is that we put in hours upon hours of time, blood, sweat, and tears to bring out the best in our teams, only to have them turn into dust in our arms like Spider-Man did with Iron Man.

Okay, okay… I may have been a little extra, but you get what I’m saying. Despite not having all of the Pokemon available in this upcoming generation, it was mentioned that the majority of mons would be available. The only scary part is not finding out which mons will have become “the vanished” until we start playing the games this fall. Despite this, it’s probably safe to say that at least six of your favorite Pokemon are safe – so now you can take solace in knowing that you’ll probably have enough old favorites to form a full roster. Less popular monsters such as Beautify and Castform probably won’t survive the snap, though.

However, all is not lost, my child. I have come up with two easy solutions to this problem that we face. Solution one is to stop playing the new games. There are 7 generations worth of old games that you can have a blast with. And besides, if you really want to show your feelings about the new changes they are making, then show them with your lack of financial support. Honestly, if enough people feel the same way, Ninendo, the Pokemon Company, and Game Freak will definitely feel the loss in their bank accounts and may make changes in the future. At the end of the day, for them, it really is about gaining an increased profit margin. The other option is to just enjoy the future games for what they are. Sure, you may not have all the mons of your liking, but I bet that you can make do with the rest of the roster and have a pretty good time while doing it as well! Don’t forget that these people have also been working very hard to bring us something like this. And who knows? They may decide to change their minds one day and give us the National Dex back!